


Diana's Legacy

by Cactaceae28



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series, Supernatural
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Gen Work, Humor, Hunter McCoy, Hunter Spock, Mood Whiplash, au-ish, high levels of sass, mild spoilers for SPN season 4-6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-30 23:37:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6446767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cactaceae28/pseuds/Cactaceae28
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock and Bones were hiding something. Jim was going to have to confront them soon, if only to satisfy his own curiosity. It was just that he got the feeling he wasn’t going to like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Suspicion

One of the disadvantages of a deep space five year mission was that given the long periods of inactivity and the relatively minor size of the population, sooner or later every secret and past shame is revealed. Most were innocuous things; who took the Astrophysics final with a hangover that didn’t let them see straight, who’s a fan of that cheesy romance soap opera and scrambles to catch up every shore leave, who has a significant other waiting for them or one from whom they are running away.

Not even the senior crew was spared this, though admittedly their secrets tended to come out in as bombastically a way as possible and be rather bloody affairs.

The point was:

Jim had, since he became captain of the flagship, learned a lot more about his crew than he imagined possible when he was just an ensign, even some things that he would have been much better off not knowing –in fact, he had half a mind to forbid any mention of his Chief Medical Officer or Science Officer’s past love lives, because he _didn’t want to know_ what was going through their heads at the time but it was obvious they didn’t have an ounce of sense between the two of them if the string of stalkers/murderers/just plain bad people is any indication.

And yes, he knew that it wasn’t Nancy’s fault that something took her form and tried to kill him and that T’Pring was seven at the time and thus no one could guess how big of a b … _ad person_ she was going to turn out to be. He had the right to be unreasonable here.

The real point of this was:

Spock and Bones were hiding something. Well, in all fairness ‘hiding’ was probably not the right term, because he had no doubt that if he were to confront them they wouldn’t really bother to deny it, much less lie about whatever ‘it’ was. The cynical, maybe a tiny bit bitter part of him also said that if they actually wanted to hide, he wouldn’t get a clue until whatever it was got out of control and they already had a foot in the grave because they were idiots like that.

He knows that there was something he hadn’t been told about because he was not a moron, please and thank you, and even in the usual bizarre SNAFUs they somehow winded up in every other week, sometimes the two of them got this look --kind of similar to Spock’s Must-I-Deal-With-Clueless-Humans look, but Bones was in on it and it turned more into a Must-I-Deal-With-Clueless-Civilians which was pretty strange and a bit insulting, all things considered.

Then there was the utterly out of left-field knowledge that somehow worked, and the conversations that seem to be in code, except he didn’t actually believe the two of them could sit down and prepare a whole code without casualties occurring; unless green-ice-water-blooded, pointy-eared-computer stood for something else apart from the obvious.

… Okay, so he was around 99.99% sure that those did stand for something aside from the obvious but implying that there may be any sort of affection between the two was just asking for your next physical to be a lot more painful than it had to be.

The thing was, Jim was getting a bit tired of being so completely out of the loop in crisis like the following:

A… something incorporeal and extremely powerful had infiltrated the ship and crashed all the servers except, thanks to Scotty’s quick thinking, the ones that regulate life-support. It wanted either domination of the galaxy or to kill all blondes who fit a ridiculously specific list of requirements. Jim hadn’t quite understood that part because he was too busy fighting for his life since, wonder of wonders, he did fit all of the inexplicably detailed criteria of the thing, as did Lieutenant Carter, of Security.

Anyway, after a few hours, several scares and what Jim would have sworn were curses in pre-Surak Vulcan to the thing’s mother –given the way it had screeched and lunged for his First Officer even though Jim had been about four seconds away from becoming puree a la Captain—they had finally managed to confine it in a small perimeter around Lab 5’s main computer through a judicious use of mathematical impossibilities, jury-rigging in the Jeffery Tubes that he Didn’t Know About and, for some reason, enough replicated salt to stop a freight train.

Jim had followed the two officers into the Lab in spite of any argument they tried to throw at him –true, the ghost/computer virus hadn’t really attacked anyone without provocation except its targets, so it was pretty reasonable in theory that the pair of them would have a better chance at catching it by surprise. Except that pretty much every sentient had a healthy self-preservation instinct somewhere, and he doubted it was going to just stand there and let them do… whatever it was the planned to do. So, on he went, ready to end the danger to his ship.

He was understandably taken aback when he learned that apparently, the plan was to throw its weight in salt at the computer and then set it on fire. Obviously it wasn’t that simple; the thing appeared as a semi-opaque mist emanating from the computer’s main circuits, and tried once again its level best to strangle him however it could. Actually destroying the hardware, and that was a headache and a half when he had to explain to Starfleet later, took a lot of bruises from all three of them, a sprained ankle, a concussion and a pair of singed eyebrows, but finally the thing vanished with a wail and all was quiet at last.

Spock calmly limped to the fire extinguisher and proceeded to douse the mangled pile of metal and ashes that had been a top-of-the-line machine like it was something that happened every day.

“I don’t know if I should be glad or curse the fact that some fuglies learned how to work a computer.”

“A talent which is evidently more than you have been able to achieve, doctor.”

Jim would always swear that he only lost consciousness, and not fainted shut up Bones, to get away from the snipe-fest that followed.

That was not to say, of course, that all cases of weirdness were quite as violent:

The last mission had been hands down one of the more grueling, painful missions he had had to do. As it usually happened, the crew had no idea just how horrible the following two weeks were going to be, as the parameters had been fairly straightforward: take the Tellarite Ambassador and his entourage to a neutral planet in the neighboring system, so that he could negotiate the establishment of a new scientific colony there.

For the sake of fairness, he had decided to trust the Ambassador to actually be diplomatic and not ignite the tempers of the other party. In hindsight, the fact that the Ambassador had decided to take his family with him, including his bratty pre-teen daughter and angsting teen son should have had him already running for the hills.

Three days in, and Jim was desperate enough to consider calling the Klingon High Council and beg for an attack. Well, maybe not beg. Insulting them would probably work just as well, if not better because begging would probably just make them laugh at his misfortune. By the time they finally dropped the family off, none of the crew was unaffected. Even Chekov who was usually rather friendly had taken to muttering nasty sounding strings of words in Russian when a shrill voice interrupted him for the umpteenth time, and he hadn’t even seen Scotty for days.

In any case, Jim would plead bone-deep tiredness and a headache not bad enough for painkillers but still very distracting for forgetting to check and entering their shared bathroom just as his First was taking off his black undershirt.

“Ah, sorry, Spock, I didn’t—”

Jim would have added something else, but he was distracted by the fact that his straight-laced first officer had a tattoo on his left side. Still, he could have gotten past it if it was a super-secret Vulcan mark for some obscure, not-for-outworlders reasons, but it was a _pentagram_. A star surrounded with _Latin_ words; in other words, a very much human design, and superstitious to boot.

For a moment his brain kind of stopped and he wondered if he had somehow been dumped into another alternate universe, but at least the Mirror’s evil beard had made some minuscule amount of sense in context.

“Sir?”

“You have a tattoo,” He had blurted out. Spock looked down, as if he had forgotten it himself.

“I do.”

“ _Why_ do you have a tattoo!?” Jim was not proud of the high-pitched quality his voice had just taken.

“It has been a tradition of my mother’s family for several generations.”

“Wait, your mom made you get a tattoo? Lady Amanda has a tattoo?” Seriously, the sweet, level-headed woman he had met a few months before was about the last person from whom he would have expected something like this. His own mother? Sure. Someone who had wooed a member of the most logical species in the galaxy? What?

“Are you alright, Jim?” No, no he wasn’t, but what was he supposed to say? My understanding of the world has just shattered, please wait while I go reboot my brain again?

“Yes, of course, Mr. Spock. I’ll just…go.” And he fled the room nearly forgetting to close the door behind him in is hurry.

About five months later, on circumstances best left forgotten, Jim discovered that doctor McCoy had the exact same design tattooed over his heart. If it had been literally any other two members of Starfleet, he would have dismissed it as a coincidence, maybe the result of a little teenage rebellion and a body ink shop conveniently close to the Academy. As it was…

He was really going to have to confront them soon, if only to satisfy his curiosity. It’s just that he got this terrible feeling he wasn’t going to like it at all.

The latest incident had just been the last straw; Jim had beamed down with an away party to a mining colony that had just suffered a string of murders, set about three Terran weeks apart between one victim and the next, which would be more or less a month on the planet. The security stationed there was utterly baffled since there was absolutely nothing linking the four victims, except that they liked to walk around sometimes, as did several dozens of the colonist, which was absolutely no help whatsoever.

To complicate matters, human life was only actually possible in controlled environments like the shelter they were in at the moment, and moving around between the facilities meant using modified transporters working like an elevator would.

Bones had, predictably, spent a good twenty minutes grumbling about transporters and the health hazard of allowing your body to be broken down into molecules only to be put back together who knew how and where. Spock had eagerly, and he meant _eagerly_ because Jim refused to believe that he was not fully aware of what he was invoking, interrupted to explain the physics involved in the process and Bones had exploded then, turning all of his righteous rage onto a recipient willing to give as good as he got.

They had investigated. They had asked around. They had _not_ been unexpectedly attacked by whoever or whatever it was. They had tentatively concluded that the aforementioned attacked on a set schedule, which would put the next attack around the following night.

Somewhere.

In one of the sectored segments that could only be accessed by using the transporters. It was going to be a fun night, Jim could just see it. Bones however, seemed to have put something before their transport in his quest against technology.

“Phasers,” he was complaining to the Vulcan when Jim saw him on their base of operations. “Bloody unreliable, is what they are. Give me a good colt any day, at least you know when the thing’s gonna be useless instead of leaving you stranded at the worst possible time.”

“Doctor, phasers have proven to be more effective than silver bullets in 78.6217% of the hunts. Logically—” Spock was interrupted by a snarl that promised pain to come if he dared finish that sentence.

“Silver has worked well enough for centuries,” Bones pressed on. Jim had kind of slowed down, because the conversation was getting surreal and he wasn’t sure he wanted to get involved.

“I assure you I am well acquainted with that fact. Pure silver is also six times more difficult to procure than it was three hundred years ago.”

Bones mumbled something that sounded like ‘damn letters’ which… okay, not touching that either, and Jim cleared his throat before they decided chucking precious metals at the killer was the way to go.

The next morning, after he had somehow gotten separated from his two officers and spent the rest of the night looking for them, he found Bones looking about to burst from smugness as he treated a cut that went all the way down Spock’s arm –and neither one looked particularly contrite about the charred remains of the killer who also had a silver dagger sticking out of its back, which was also very far from the norm.

Obviously, an intervention was necessary.

So, to make a long story short: As soon as their shift was over Jim had summoned the pair of them to his quarters and he was going to confront the two higher ranking officers on board after himself, who also happened to be his two best friends even if they could be totally irritating and vague when they wanted, that apparently was a lot more than he thought, which was saying something.


	2. Explanation

Spock followed him from the bridge and stood in front of the desk, cool as a cucumber. McCoy appeared barely four minutes later, brandishing his tricorder like he expected his captain to be dying on the floor or something –probably because he had never really ordered him to his quarters before; when he wasn’t on shift Bones had a standing invitation and most times he had taken ill the doctor was the one to override the lock without so much as a by your leave and drag him to Sickbay by the ear if that’s what it took.

Jim glared at them for a few seconds. “You two are hiding something.”

The statement didn’t earn him much more than a couple of blank stares directed at him, but not even one twitch of guilt. Fine, maybe that had been a little too broad.

“Gentlemen, there is something going on and I want answers,” he tried again, using a bit of his Captain Voice. “I’ve overlooked it in the past because there had been no major problems, but this last mission was different. You’ve both pledged self-defense and I know you would not lie, but I can’t understand why the killer couldn’t have been apprehended. I need to know what happened.”

Jim waited. The other two shared a long look before they turned back to him.

“He was a werewolf,” Spock said firmly.

“I’m… sorry, what did you just say?” Jim said, deciding to ignore Bones’ grumble of ‘sure, just blurt it out why don’t you’ because he couldn’t have heard right.

“He was a werewolf, captain. As far as we have been able to determine, he was bitten during a short expeditionary mission, and subsequently did not learn about his nature until he was subjected to a satellite’s direct influence on a planetary environment upon settling on the colony.”

“He attacked when there was a full moon, you mean.”

Spock lifted an eyebrow at the blatant sarcasm, but didn’t rise to the bait. “Precisely.”

If he wasn’t so sure that Vulcans weren’t into practical jokes –as they seemed to range between the ones who wouldn’t know a joke if it slapped them across the face and those with a wicked, understated sense of humor that was actually kind of awesome—he would have scoffed at the turn the conversation had taken.

“That’s crazy. I mean, those stories, they were all pre-warp fiction. Fairytales and legends from before Man could explain them with science.”

 “Oh, they’re real alright. Pretty much everything but Big Foot is real,” Bones shrugged, “Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, fae… and most of ‘em will kill normal people for the hell of it.”

“So… the silver?”

The doctor nodded, “Supernatural beings are like cockroaches. Phasers work well enough on the weaker ones but every now and then you find one that’s only pissed off by them and then you need to go back to the roots.”

Jim brushed a hand over his face, as all the pieces he had began to slot into place and he _really_ didn’t like the picture that was forming.

“Okay. Terran myths are real. So you are like Van Helsing?”

“Not quite; the original Abraham van Helsing did not have any foreknowledge of the supernatural. He was a doctor and philosopher -” Bones coughed harshly and Spock pursed his lips, but carried on. “The doctor and I are descended from a long line of hunters, the Winchester family.”

“Winchester, like the old rifle?” Jim said, before the real revelation hit him. “Wait, you two are _blood related_?”

Spock didn’t sniff nor did he roll his eyes, but his exasperation came across loud and clear. “As are several thousand members of the same species, provided that one researches the span of a sufficient number of generations.”

“I’ve never put that much thought into it, but you are right Jim. The hobgoblin is my baby cousin,” McCoy countered with a wicked smirk.

This time Spock _did_ look scandalized. The mental image was actually kind of ridiculous, so Jim didn’t blame him; at least it distracted him a bit from the hysteria bubbling at the revelations of the last few minutes.

He dragged a hand down his face, trying to regain his composure. It wasn’t that he hadn’t already seen more than its fair share of impossibilities; after all, he had been part of the first time travel ever, he had chased Jack the Ripper and met Apollo. More importantly, he couldn’t afford to not believe, because a universe where he couldn’t trust his closest friends’ advice was not one where he wanted to be.

So monsters –Shelley’s and Stoker’s kind, the kind that went bump in the night and melted under water-- were real, and there were people, a whole clan at least, that fought against them.

“Then… people on Earth can turn into monsters,” a horrible, impossible thought came to him. In the stories, the supernatural creatures were always so alien, following rules that didn’t follow the natural order. “What about outside Earth?”

“… Yes. Andorians, Vulcans, Klingons, they all have their own beasties; I bet even the Organians have skeletons in the closet,” McCoy said, not unsympathetic.

“Sooner or later, every sentient race is visited by the Mother of All and the Alphas are born. Within the first millennia, a small portion of the population has been turned while another has become aware and started to fight back,” Spock added with the tone of a lecturer. Jim tried to take comfort in that, trying to convince himself this was not different than a debriefing on a strange new world.

“Not to mention that Heaven and Hell don’t really _care_ where your heart is or what you look like, as long as you have a soul.”

“Indeed.”

“But I thought you didn’t believe in God,” Jim stated, looking at Spock inquiringly, since the Vulcan wouldn’t lie about that and had never shied away from making his views on the subject clear.

“Yeah, that’s a sore spot for us Winchesters,” Bones said with a snort, though he looked mildly uncomfortable. “Since we are coming clean, you might as well know the full truth. I don’t know about other planets, but up until the early 21st century, human hunters didn’t really know how the universe worked. Sure, they fought demons and they had learnt that things like Holy water or hallowed ground worked against them, but there was no _proof_ of what happened once one moved on _._

 The thing is, the Eugenics Wars were child’s play compared with what truly happened on Earth around 2010. ‘Course, with people recovering from all the human destruction going around, the supernatural massacres flied right under everyone’s radar; otherwise, the Hunting community would have been exposed then.”

“The term you might understand best, Captain, would be the Apocalypse.” Spock dropped that little bombshell like he was giving the Science department’s quarterly report.

Jim gaped, “Mr. Spock, I hate to ask but you are being completely literal, aren’t you?”

Normally he would have found amusement on the raised eyebrows he got in answer to that question, but he was still a bit too busy trying to regain his footing after the floor had been metaphorically yanked out from under him. Again.

“Okay,” he said, “Okay.”

“You might want to sit down, Jim,” McCoy interrupted, the concern ringing clearly in his voice. Jim nodded, and tentatively dropped on the edge of his bed.

“So… the End of Times. It was supposed to have happened already? Starting on Earth? And these… hunters stopped it?”

“The matter is rather more complicated than that, but essentially you would be correct.” Spock tilted his head, considering. “If you wish to learn the specifics, a prophet left written records of the events in question.”

“Of course he did.”

“No need to sound so dismissive Jim, I learnt to read with Edlund’s abridged gospels.”

“Yes, my mother insisted on much the same thing.”

McCoy slowly got a huge, mischievous grin and for the first time diverted his attention from the captain to address Spock directly. “Let me guess, Castiel is your favorite,” he snickered and Jim was reminded of when they learnt about the sehlat while they were on route to Babel.

“Can we not get sidetracked? Please?”

“Well, there’s not much more to tell. Before that mess, hunters were a bunch of paranoid loners with a death wish, but after they learned just how outmatched they were, the patriarchs decided that something had to change. Nowadays we have a network of contacts and nearly all of the descendants have been raised in the family business, even the ones that weren’t born on Earth like our own ball of sunshine over there.”

Predictably, a long suffering “Doctor,” followed that.

Jim nodded half-heartedly, not so much at the words themselves but to acknowledge the clear exit he had been given. They’d have to deal with all this, sooner rather than later. He would have to ask many more questions, re-evaluate what he knew of his subordinates and they’d have to adjust to having someone else aware of the masquerade, but on the whole, it felt as if an invisible wall had begun to crumble and he could see the other side for the first time.

“You are dismissed,” he said.

Bones rolled his shoulder and nodded, grumbling about the paperwork Chapel was going to ambush him with as soon as he stepped inside Sickbay. Spock reiterated his offer for a game of chess during the ship’s evening.

They both left his quarters soon after that and in the silence that followed Jim realized that really, nothing important had changed.

There would be ample time to boldly go into the unknown; for now, a nap sounded like the best idea he’d had in a while.


End file.
